Samuel Green (Klansman)

Samuel Green (13 November 1889-18 August 1949) was Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1946 to 1949, succeeding James A. Colescott and preceding Samuel Roper.

Biography
Samuel Green was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1889, and he worked as an obstetrician before joining the Ku Klux Klan in 1922. By the early 1930s, he had become the Grand Dragon of Georgia, and, in 1939, Hiram Wesley Evans sold the Klan to Green and James A. Colescott. When Colescott was forced to dissolve the Klan in 1944 due to financial difficulties, Green reformed the Georgia Klans with its focus on white supremacism and anti-communism. On 9 May 1946, Green oversaw the new Klan's first induction ceremony, reviving the Klan at Stone Mountain. The Klan enlisted white World War II veterans who felt restless, as they were upset that black civilians took their jobs while they were away at war; Green also opposed large-scale Jewish immigration and African-American veterans coming home to fight for their rights in America itself, as well as the rising labor movement. Government informants, federal agents, and investigative journalists began to infiltrate the Klan, but, in 1949, 700 new members joined the Klan in a single day. Green died in 1949.